Official Senna telemetry Imola 94?

[munudeges]

Really? So tell me, what suspension is doing?

Very little when the ride height is clearly that low.

No, it's you saying the "underside doing steering", so it's up to you to show experiments that prove something.

Aquaplaning doesn't just happen on water.........

It's crystal clear that the behaviour of that car wasn't right from the start of that race. For me it's very clear that until that is explained, and it never will be by the people who should, then talking about broken steering is well wide of the mark and especially given the other serious accidents during the year. The cars were simply highly unstable aerodynamically and Imola was a mole-hilled disaster.

[izybluffen]

I have old Senna books which says from day one Senna hated the FW16. From the initial testing of the car he was not happy and fixing those issues to Senna's liking was not going to happen quickly. Newey still based his car on the previous years car without the ride height controls. With this the rear suspension was too low to the ground. Senna also complained of balance issues which cause to car to go from oversteer to understeer and vise versa even on the same corner.

Midway through 1994 Williams came out with the FW16"b" which had a revised and lifted rear suspension and fixed the other issues Senna wanted at the start of the year. Another fix was the steering coloum, as Senna hated the angle and thats why it was cut and shut in the first place - For interests sake.

In Imola in practice you can see the balance issues all over the track and when Senna spins at the hairpin.

In case of the accident the car doesn't slide or bounce sideways, it skates or skidded over the bumps (if you know what I mean) because of the rear sitting to low and Senna corrects the steering with 50% less throttle somebody else added and then it "grips" and spits him into vicious understeer which big steering correction there wont work. He held it straight and was on the anchors as hard as possible which was in the telemetry. I think he slowed it down around 100kph before he ran out of road and went to the grass and then barrier.

I dont really think the steering coloum snapped before the accident. It did from the impact. But rear end too low, skated over the bumps into a oversteer into understeer accident in a way like Marco Simmonchelli where the bike snapped back the other way and then he was just a passenger.

RIP Ayrton and Marco.

[GitanesBlondes]

Good points izy.

When you watch the onboard of Schumacher, you can see how much contact the rear of the chassis is making with the track surface.

The oversteer/understeer issue is one of the points I was trying to make earlier in this topic because that nasty problem is the exact thing that happened to the FW-16 in the middle of Tamburello. The car oversteers, and right after Senna adjusts, it understeers right off the circuit.

[timbo]

Pendulum swing is not oversteer then understeer. It's two oversteer phases. The prime example is Gordon Smiley's crash. The second phase causes the car to live the track with large amount of radial movement, in Senna's case he left the track exactly on tangent line.

[fausto cedros]

Munudeges is spot on.

[Webber2011]

Hey guys just an update on that video I mentioned earlier.
My mate has copied it to disc and has promised to post it this week

[GitanesBlondes]

Much as I abhor Andrew Benson, he had a piece up about Adrian Newey and Senna on the BBC website. I've bolded the relevant section.

Ayrton Senna's death still haunts designer Adrian Newey

Design legend Adrian Newey says he is still troubled by Ayrton Senna's death in one of his cars 19 years ago.
Red Bull's Newey was chief designer at Williams when the three-time world champion was killed in a crash during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

"What happened that day, what caused the accident, still haunts me to this day," he told BBC Sport.

Newey said "no-one will know" whether the accident was caused by driver error or steering-column failure.

The Brazilian suffered fatal head injuries in a crash at the 190mph Tamburello corner of the Imola circuit on 1 May 1994.

Newey and Patrick Head, Williams technical director at the time, were prosecuted in Italy for manslaughter but eventually acquitted.

The prosecution argued a poorly manufactured modification to the steering column had caused it to fracture and break at the crucial moment.

Williams said all the data pointed to a driver error caused by Senna pushing too hard over bad bumps in a corner made more challenging than normal by the handling problems the car was suffering from at the time.

"The steering column failure, was it the cause, or did it happen in the accident?" said Newey, speaking in an exclusive interview to be broadcast on 5 live F1 on Thursday.

"There is no doubt it was cracked. Equally, all the data, all the circuit cameras, the on-board camera from Michael Schumacher's car that was following, none of that appears to be consistent with a steering-column failure.

"The car oversteered [when the rear tried to spin] initially and Ayrton caught that and only then did it go straight.

"But the first thing that happened was oversteer, in much the same way as you will sometimes see on a superspeedway in the States - the car will lose the rear, the driver will correct, and then it will go straight and hit the outside wall, which doesn't appear to be consistent with a steering-column failure."

(The rest is here) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/24358508

[bigpat]

....and that is the result if using only high modulus carbon to layup a tub. Strong, but shatters like glass...

There is no doubt the column broke. Ratzenberger and Barrichello's cars didn't break the column, and neither would they, they aren't subject to much force that would do it. I remember watching a documentary on the crash, and on board, you see the steering wheel moving up and down perhaps 15-20mm. That is the smoking gun... The commentator said it was normal, as the steering has a 'shock absorber' that allows movement. Absolute rubbish. No road car has a 'wobbly steering wheel, and neither has any Formula one car. They are rigidly mounted and move inside spherical bearings....

Plenty of drivers have lost it in high speed corners, and don't jump on the brakes. Senna did, and very hard. It's a natural reaction to an abnormal feeling, like a column breaking. That's my opinion anyway.

Remember, Senna did not have one bruise or broken bone in his body, Prof. Sid Watkins confirmed that, it was the intrusion into his helmet visor that killed him.

As for the telemetry going missing, it doesn't surprise me. The powers that be in F1 know the consequences of charges, and work together to make sure no one gets nailed. I have seen it, and heard stories of it happening in other situations in this sport. Remember, Sid Watkins knew t the scene that he was gone, but they had to remove him from there. If he died there, the whole track would have become a crime scene, with everyone there as well. Remember too the contractural obligations to televise the race, as we saw in Adelaide 1991 despite clearly unsafe conditions.....

It's a great sport, but it has its ruthless side as well....

[ChrisF1]

When you say no broken bones, are we know ignoring the basal skull fracture (fractures?) that Senna had which would have killed him if the visor piercing hadn't?

[bigpat]

No, I didn't realise he had a skull fracture. I suppose we'll never know if it indeed would have been fatal in itself.Aside from the head trauma, yes, he didn't have any other physical injuries.....

[Tim.Wright]

Remember, Senna did not have one bruise or broken bone in his body, Prof. Sid Watkins confirmed that, it was the intrusion into his helmet visor that killed him.

Where did Sid say this? The only person I've heard say that is that annoying guy John Bisignano in the Senna movie. About 50% of the things he said were rubbish so I wouldn't count him as a reliable source.

[munudeges]

Much as I abhor Andrew Benson, he had a piece up about Adrian Newey and Senna on the BBC website. I've bolded the relevant section.

Thanks Gitanes. Yes, I read that article but didn't really want to drag this topic out further. Newey confirms what some of us have thought really, but it's almost as if he can't say what he wants to say and doesn't go far enough.

There's no way Senna was able to correct the oversteer and then immediately have no steering just at that point. It just doesn't make any sense. Indeed, the Renault telemetry confirms steering power was being applied fully from that moment until impact, albeit erratically, as per Richard Williams's book. It's as if Senna was pulling on the wheel trying to get the car to turn, steering power was being applied but the car wasn't changing direction. I think I've said all I can say on that one.

[GitanesBlondes]

Much as I abhor Andrew Benson, he had a piece up about Adrian Newey and Senna on the BBC website. I've bolded the relevant section.

Thanks Gitanes. Yes, I read that article but didn't really want to drag this topic out further. Newey confirms what some of us have thought really, but it's almost as if he can't say what he wants to say and doesn't go far enough.

There's no way Senna was able to correct the oversteer and then immediately have no steering just at that point. It just doesn't make any sense. Indeed, the Renault telemetry confirms steering power was being applied fully from that moment until impact, albeit erratically, as per Richard Williams's book. It's as if Senna was pulling on the wheel trying to get the car to turn, steering power was being applied but the car wasn't changing direction. I think I've said all I can say on that one.

I agree munudeges.

I have watched that onboard camera on Senna's car hundreds, if not thousands of times, and it is so obvious that the rear end steps out on him in the apex of the corner. The claimed steering column failure is so ludicrous at this point, that I can't believe that people still accept it as the final explanation. It's like I've said, it sounds much sexier than the reality that there was nothing Ayrton could have done as he chose the wrong car setup that day. From the morning warm up to the actual race start, he opted to run a much lower ride height as the characteristics the Williams was displaying in the race was not present in the morning warm up. There was much less bottoming out across the entire circuit, and crucially, there was no bottoming out in the middle of Tamburello.

Newey knows exactly what happened that day, and he is the only one who was in the Williams camp that has gone as far as he has with his statements. I give him a lot of credit, since as we see even here, it's difficult for people to accept Senna made a bad judgment that day. If he had run Damon's setup, he would still be here today.

[timbo]

Newey knows exactly what happened that day, and he is the only one who was in the Williams camp that has gone as far as he has with his statements. I give him a lot of credit, since as we see even here, it's difficult for people to accept Senna made a bad judgment that day. If he had run Damon's setup, he would still be here today.

It's just amazes me how you keep repeating that the only motivation of people defending steering failure hypothesis is that of somehow defending Senna.
Both variants put question on his judgement. If he had a faulty column, and we have indications that it developed over time and the amount of flex was apparent at least the lap before, it's too his decision to continue the race and risk his life.
I keep repeating the same question -- why his car developed massive understeer when leaving the circuit?
It might be that he lost the rear end first then corrected. But if you repeat what Newey said, than I have to point to you that the two phase "pendulum" motion that causes the car to leave the circuit to the outside of the corner is two oversteer events. If you make parallels with Smiley's accident then you have to notice that he crashed the wall with significant radial speed component. In Senna's case it was almost completely tangential movement.
As for Senna loosing car due to bumps, you can watch two his accidents in Mexico. They look nothing like what happened in Imola.

[Richard]

We know it's game over when we get posts along the lines of "I'm right and you are unable to acknowledge that because you're a fanboy".

The other person might be an emotional fanboy, or perhaps the accuser is the one who's being emotional. The most likely answer usually lies in some middle ground. Often there is no definitive answer because we'll never know the full facts. In many cases both parties have valid points when viewed from their perspective.

The only absolute truth in these debates is that the truth is never absolute (except for torque ).